Current Members
Faculty
Administration
Scientific
Astacio, Erick
Research Specialist
Erick received his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Penn State University. As an undergraduate, Erick served as a reservist in the United States Marine Corps as a Transmissions Systems Operator. Under the mentorship of Dr. Justin R. DiAngelo, he studied the differential expression of splicing factors and identified genes that are essential for fat metabolism. After graduation, Erick moved to Philadelphia and joined the Sehgal lab where he works on various projects to study sleep and circadian rhythms.
Bernardez, Sara
Post-Doctoral Fellow
How do the brain and body talk to each other? And even more, how does that serve us to feel good? Those questions motivated Sara to move from Spain to Switzerland, complete PhD in Neuroscience in Zurich and now cross the Atlantic to keep digging into them at the Sehgal Lab. During her postdoc she will look at how sleep is encoded in the brain when our body is sick, because yes! How good it feels when our brain puts our body to sleep to recover from disease!
Cho, Bumsik
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Bumsik received his Ph.D. from Hanyang University in Korea under the supervising of Jiwon Shim. During his PhD, he studied how hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell populations are maintained by endogenous or exogenous signals. However, contrary to previous studies, Bumsik was also curious about how animals can maintain homeostasis in each organ through blood cells. In particular, he was interested in regulating the homeostasis of the body through the brain and blood cells interaction. As a postdoctoral researcher in Sehgal's lab, Bumsik would like to find out how the blood cell affects sleep or circadian rhythm.
Clark, Molly
Research Technician
Molly grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended Bryn Mawr College where she earned a Bachelor's degree in Biology. For Molly's undergraduate thesis, she studied the mechanisms behind reproductive polyphenism in the pea aphid under the mentorship of Dr. Greg Davis. After graduation, Molly joined the Sehgal lab as a Research Technician for Dr. Julie Williams where she works on a variety of projects related to sleep, stress, and immune function.
Costa, Paula
Pre-Doctoral Trainee
Paula was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and moved to the U.S in 2017. She completed her Bachelor’s degree at the University at Buffalo. As an undergraduate, Paula studied the effects of the estrous cycle on NPSR-mediated behaviors with Dr. Stewart Clark. She joined the Sehgal lab in 2023 as a thesis student, and will be studying the role of the blood-brain barrier in regulating sleep.
Deal, Samantha
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Samantha received her Ph.D. in Developmental Biology from Baylor College of Medicine in the laboratory of Dr. Shinya Yamamoto. While in his lab, she performed two forward genetic screens in Drosophila – one to identify genetic regulators of dopamine metabolism and another to functionally classify genetic variants found in patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Samantha is fascinated by neurogenetics and works to understand how specific genes and genetic variants may contribute to neurodevelopment and neurological disease. In the Sehgal lab, Samantha will be investigating the relationship between mitochondrial disease, metabolism disruption, and sleep disturbance.
Guevara, Camilo
Pre-Doctoral Trainee
Camilo was born in Bogotá, Colombia, where he received his MSc after investigating the effect of lithium in calcium signaling in Purkinje neurons. Attracted by one of biology's biggest mysteries, he joined the lab in 2022 to study sleep. Camilo's current projects aim to understand sleep regulation at different scales. At the cellular scale, he is studying how organelles relevant to lipid and ROS metabolism regulate sleep. While at the circuit and organismal level, he uses in vivo imaging to understand the interaction between circadian and sleep circuits. Camilo likes playing with fancy microscopes.
Iascone, Daniel
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Dan grew up in Massachusetts, and received his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his PhD in Franck Polleux’s lab at Columbia University, where he developed tools to map synapses across whole pyramidal neurons and studied how global synaptic organization changes in mice expressing the human gene-duplication SRGAP2C. Dan is interested in the timing of brain development across evolution, and in the Sehgal lab his current research is focused on creating a model system in Drosophila to investigate the genetic control of developmental tempo across species and environments.
Kanigicherla, Vishal
Undergraduate Student
Vishal, from northern Virginia, is a Biochemistry and Neurobiology major in the Vagelos program. He is interested in circadian rhythms as they relate to neuron degeneration, and will be working with Elana Pyfrom in the Sehgal Lab beginning in 2022.
Li, Fu
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Fu was born in central China and got his B.S. and M.S. at Sichuan University and Tsinghua University, respectively. Afterwards, he moved to Germany and worked at Max Planck Institute for his doctoral study on membrane trafficking. At Penn, he will use fruit fly and mice models to investigate the endocytosis roles in the blood-brain-barrier (BBB).
Lopez Valencia, Mariela
Pre-Doctoral Trainee
Mariela graduated with a B.S. in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience from UC San Diego in 2020. During her time there she worked with Dr. Olivia Osborn where she investigated the mechanisms by which antipsychotic medications induce food intake and weight gain. She also worked with Dr. Christina Gremel investigating the neural circuits that control decision-making as well as how alcohol dependence disrupts such circuits. Mariela joined the lab in 2022 and is now interested in investigating the role of specific genetic mutations in metabolism and sleep.
Pivarshev, Pavel
Research Technician
Pavel is an Aquarius. He was born in Yoshkar-Ola, Russia; grew up in Columbus, GA; and earned a Biology B.S. & Visual Arts B.A. from Duke University in Durham, NC. As an undergrad, he worked at two Evolutionary Biology labs, investigating broad genetic concepts like natural selection & adaptive evolution. He also helped out at the Nijhout Lab, studying the phylogenesis of butterfly wings. Post-graduation, he moved to Philly and joined the Sehgal lab–now, he has his hands on multiple projects studying sleep, & circadian rhythms.
Madhwal, Sukanya
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Sukanya earned her Ph.D. in Tina Mukherjee's lab at InStem, Bangalore in India. Her doctoral research focused on uncovering the relevance of the olfactory perception of the environment with the development of blood cells and along with investigating the homeostatic functions of blood cells. In Sehgal's lab, her current area of interest revolves around uncovering the regulation and relevance of circadian rhythms in peripheral tissues, specifically focusing on the immune system.
Moore, Rebecca
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Rebecca has always been fascinated by the way organisms modify their behavior using clues from their environment. Understanding these host-environmental interactions has served as a motivation for her previous research. Rebecca completed her PhD in the lab of Dr. Coleen T. Murphy from the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University studying C. elegans transgenerational epigenetic avoidance behavior following exposure to the gram-negative pathogen P. aeruginosa. Rebecca is interested in using her previous research experiences to study inter tissue communication during sleep. More specifically, Rebecca will work in the Sehgal lab to understand how gut-secreted molecules affect sleep in flies. This research will shed light on molecules that navigate the body to promote or inhibit sleep.
Nguyen, Andrew
Pre-Doctoral Trainee
Andrew is a PhD candidate in the Neuroscience Graduate Group. He grew up in the cornfields of Illinois and moved out to the east coast, where he graduated with a B.S. in Cognitive and Brain Sciences from Tufts University. As an undergrad, Andrew conducted an honors thesis with Dr. Rob Jackson investigating glial factors regulating sleep in flies. Afterwards, he joined Dr. Michael Young at The Rockefeller University as a research assistant working on several projects related to genetic mechanisms of sleep and circadian rhythms in flies before coming to Penn. In the Sehgal lab, he is mainly interested in body-brain communication and is planning to focus on understanding the relationship between peripheral inflammation and sleep in the gut-brain axis.
Pyfrom, Elana
Pre-Doctoral Trainee
Elana is a Cell and Molecular Biology-Genetics & Epigenetics track PhD student. She grew up in Maryland, received her Sc.B. in Molecular and Cell Biology at Brown University, and worked in Andrew Gordus’ worm+spider neuroscience lab before coming to Penn. She is interested in how environmental factors influence genetic and metabolic processes, so she is also completing training in PSOM’s Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology. Upon joining the Sehgal Lab in 2020, Elana plans to characterize mechanisms of lipid metabolism which regulate sleep need.
Wu, Tianqi
Master's Student
Tianqi is from China and studied Biomedical Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. As an Undergrad, he worked in Dr. Chang Liu's lab at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, studying memory in flies under disrupted circadian rhythms. After graduating, Tianqi worked as a technician in Prof. Yi Rao's lab at Peking University. Now, he is a Master's Student in Bioengineering at Penn, where he is working with Sara to investigate the interplay between sleep, sickness, and metabolism.
Yang, Jianing
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Jianing received her BA at Colby College majoring in Mathematics and Physics. In addition, she received her PhD in Mathematics at University of Pennsylvania, studying Arithmetic Geometry with advisor David Harbater. Jianing is now embarking on a new journey transitioning into Bioinformatics, and is excited to do Statistical Analysis on the sleep-related experiments, among other things, at the Sehgal lab.
Youngstrom, Diane
Pre-Doctoral Trainee
Diane is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She received her B.S. in Chemistry and Neuroscience from the UNC-Chapel Hill in 2021. As an undergraduate, Diane completed an honors thesis with Dr. Graham Diering focusing on neuroinflammation and tau dephosphorylation mechanisms relating to Alzheimer’s disease. She also worked on several sleep projects in the Diering lab, which inspired her NIH IRTA postbac project sleep investigating if enhancing sleep in the 5xFAD mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease could improve outcomes. Given Diane's developing passion for sleep research, she was very excited to become part of the Neuroscience Graduate Group at UPenn and to join the Sehgal lab in 2024. In the Sehgal lab, Diane is interested to explore the intersection of neurodegeneration and sleep.
Zhong, Vivian
Pre-Doctoral Trainee
Vivian was born and raised in China and moved to the United States at 16 for higher education. She earned a B.S. from the University of Washington, Seattle, followed by an M.S. from Johns Hopkins University. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology (CAMB) with a focus on Development, Stem Cell, and Regenerative Biology (DSRB). Her research journey has been shaped by previous work on stem cell signaling pathways at UW and bone regeneration at JHU, fueling her fascination with regenerative medicine and aging biology. In 2024, Vivian joined the Sehgal lab, where she is exploring the intricate relationship between sleep and aging.